The Legend of Leen, Part I
Prologue: 9 years earlier
"Bring it around!"
"Jason! We need to do it NOW!"
"It's not weak enough!"
"We. Are going. To DIE! We have to give the signal—!"
"One more shot! We need one more shot!"
"Jason!"
"Char-Char, everything you've got! Full power!"
"GROOOOOAAAARRR!"
The lights on the bridge flickered and dimmed as a Charizard's Fire Blast poured into the energy receivers on the deck below. There was heard the fire Pokémon's snarl, along with the haunting shriek of an Articuno using Blizzard, the crackle of a Raichu's Thunder, and a few hundred other Pokémon pouring their elemental energies into the star ship's weapon reserves.
"Now or never, dude!" said Nick, one of the two boys on deck.
The other, Jason, grimaced and tightened his hand around the discharge lever. His eyes followed their target on the view screen as his ship's computer drained all power from shields and targeting into the weapon. Their quarry would require every ounce of juice they could pump it full of.
In the pitch black of the bridge, all grew silent for but a moment. Against the starless space before him, Jason saw his target grow larger.
He pulled the lever.
"Fire!" He commanded the ship.
A broad beam of brilliant, multicolored light lanced across the distance between the ship and the creature. The blast struck the ancient abomination square in what could have been called its chest, stopping it in its tracks and pressing it backwards.
Had it not been shot many times by the ship's Pokémon-amplified weapons already, it would have shrugged off the hit and continued in its flight. This final blast, however, was too much for it to bear. The beam hurtled it away, pressing it ever closer to the event horizon.
Jason brought up the one communication channel that the ship had reserved. "Leen, now!" He shouted into the receiver.
Beyond the viewport, a tiny comet of golden light streaked through outer space along the ship's weapon's trajectory. At its tip was a golden sphere that Jacob knew protected a rare Pokémon, Leen, from the vacuum of space.
Jason's eyes narrowed as he prayed for their plan to work.
As the beam from the ship narrowed in diameter and died away, the monster began to transform.
It was a shape-shifter. Every time they had injured it enough to kill it, it had absorbed the energy of their bullets, lasers, and everything else, using it to transform into a more powerful iteration of itself. Each transformation required more energy to defeat, and even when defeated it only came back stronger.
They had thought too late to lure it into a black hole; it now even possessed the power to escape from beyond the event horizon.
Yet they had one hope.
They had discovered that, as the creature transformed, it was vulnerable to its transformation phase being perpetuated by introduction of a powerful wave of energy into its system. And while it was transforming, it couldn't move. The downside was that if the energy source was ever depleted, the creature would complete its transformation into an utterly unstoppable force due to all the energy it had absorbed.
From the comet's sphere erupted a beam of the special, Gold-elemental energy Leen was capable of producing. It struck the abomination's shifting form and lingered, sparkling brighter than the stars surrounding.
The self-sustaining, Gold energy—dubbed for its color—was their secret weapon in this fight. Due to properties beyond the galaxy's scientists' understanding of physics, Gold energy remained for several minutes at the power level it had when generated. It would eventually dissipate . . . unless, theoretically, there was a strong enough gravity field to hold it in place.
If Leen could force the creature past the event horizon with reserves of Gold energy surrounding its body, it would become trapped in the black hole in a perpetual metamorphosis until the end of time.
If the plan failed . . . .
In this latest transformation, it had taken everything the team had to weaken it. With all the energy they were pouring into it, if the monster completed another transformation, they would never be able to stop it.
"Come on, Leen, you can do it!"
"This had better work. Come on, Leen!"
The boys watched as Leen fired blast after blast of Gold into the writhing mass of flesh. The dark skin and armor was slowly engulfed in a splotchy bubble of shimmering, ochre light.
Then, Leen's beams began to bend away from their target. The monster itself, encapsulated in Gold energy, began to stretch like taffy.
"It's working . . . ."
"Alright, Leen, one more good shot, and then get out of there!"
As the creature of darkness fell away into its prison of oblivion, a final burst of Gold ignited the eternal night of space.
"Okay, come home, come home! You did it!"
Leen began to turn around . . . but was still moving toward the black hole.
Nick turned white in realization.
"Jason . . . he's caught in the black hole's gravity."
"LEEN! Fight it! Get out of there!"
The comet's tail slipped and fell into the darkness after the stretching mass of gold that was their enemy's final bonds. Leen's protective sphere began to distort.
"Leeeeeen!" came a warped-sounding Pokémon cry from the ship's speakers.
"Computer, full power to engines!" Jason screamed, "Get us back online!"
"Powering engines," the computer responded.
There was a low hum, and the ship began moving forward.
Too slowly.
"Leen! You have to fight! Give it everything you've got! I can't lose you! Hang on, Leen, hang on!"
Suddenly, the little orb of gold pulsed brighter. A rocket trail of energy fired off into the black hole's abyss. And slowly, slowly, Leen began moving forward.
"He's gonna make it, Jason. Hang on, Leen, we're coming! He's gonna make it."
"You can do it, Leen! Come toward us! Keep fighting with everything you've got!"
Leen's sphere came to a stop. The little Pokémon could go no further. Yet, he did not lose ground, either. The ship came into position.
"Computer! Turn us around and fire the tractor beam! Full power! No, optimum distribution between engines and tractor for escape from a Class 10 gravitational field."
"Converting power reserves," said the computer.
The bridge stayed dark until the transparent, green tractor beam lit up the ship and the space surrounding it.
"Come on, Leen! Keep pushing! We're gonna need your help!"
Leen's glow was diminishing.
"You can do it! You can do it! Come on! All you've got! This is it! The final push! You can do it! Come on!"
Jason gripped the manual accelerator with both hands and pressed forward as hard as he could, as if he could make the ship go faster.
"Please, God. Please, let us make it."
Slowly, the ship and Leen inched forward.
Behind them, the monster's golden cell spaghettied, then shriveled, and finally disappeared to a point beyond sight. It was a grim picture of what would happen to all of them if they couldn't pull free.
"How much further till breakaway?" asked the other boy on the bridge, Nick.
"Two minutes," the computer replied calmly, "The ship's engines will not survive the strain of these gravitational forces for that long without dampeners activated."
"Why didn't you tell us that before!"
"The information was not requested," the computer seemed to retort, "However, activating dampeners would detract power from the tractor beam, decreasing the probability of Leen's survival from 2.003% to 0.875%."
"Char-Char!" Jason called, "We need one more! Computer, reroute the auxiliary energy capacitors to engines!"
There was no response from below deck. Jason knew the Pokémon were exhausted.
"Char-Char, it's to save Leen."
There was a raspy set of cries from the stairwell, followed by a weak rumble of burning plasma, rushing water, tremulous quakes, and other sounds of fighters pushed beyond the brink.
"Just out of curiosity," Nick said, "What are the chances we make it out of this now?"
"Probability of all surviving: 3.101%"
Jason sighed, "Well, at least those are better odds than that time—"
"I told you not to remind me about that."
"Right. Sorry."
Jason closed his eyes and said a silent prayer.
The seconds ticked by like minutes. All the while, they could feel the trembling strain of the ship against the massive tide of gravitational forces threatening to crush them to death.
Then . . . the shaking stopped. The lights on the bridge flickered back on.
Jacob tried to speak, but realized his chest was so tight he hadn't been breathing. He forced himself to inhale—shakily—, and then said, "Computer?"
"Your ship has cleared the danger zone. Leen will be aboard in 9 seconds. All other crew show positive life signs."
The boys raced below deck. Jason shook off the dizziness he felt—he had to remind himself to breathe again—and made for the tractor bay.
The airlock was pressurizing as they reached the door.
Jason ran in and slid next to Leen's fallen form, running his hands gently across the hawk-sized bird's golden neck feathers.
"Leen is alive in waveform 3 consciousness. He should awake shortly once the oxygen circulates through his system."
"How long was he exposed to the vacuum?" Nick asked.
"Only a fraction of a second," the computer responded, "Sensors confirm his Gold Aura was active—although faint—until a moment before he lost full consciousness. The tractor beam acted as protection, although there may be minor damage to his system due to his time in the unpressurized airlock."
"So he'll make it?" Jason breathed.
"With a 96% chance of full recovery."
"Praise God."
Jason scooped up Leen and carried him into the room where his and Nick's other Pokémon lie sprawled across the floor. Most of them were breathing deeply. Some of them were unconscious.
Jason made his way to where his Charizard—his first Pokémon—lay belly-down at the front of the room. He gently laid Leen next to their larger friend and smiled.
"We did it, man. Thank you. Thank you so much. You were all awesome."
Nick knelt in similar fashion next to his Blastoise.
"That was a close call," he said. "One of the closest we've ever had."
"One of the scariest, too."
"Yeah. Let's not do that again, kay?"
Jason sighed. "I hope we never have to see another black hole again as long as we live. But knowing us. . . ."
"We need a vacation."
"We just had a vacation. Look how that turned out. Let's get back to Earth so we can get these guys digitized and to a Pokémon Center."
"Some Nurse Joy in some town is going to have the busiest day of her career, starting in a couple of hours."
"Yeah," Jason chuckled tiredly, "Nick, could you stay down here with these guys? I need to report."
"Yes. Tell 'em we just iced ourselves one, giant pile of silly putty. And please use the term, 'iced.'"
"Not gravitonically annihilated?"
"If that's an actual word, you can use that, too."
"Communications online," the computer reported, "Shall we plot a course for Earth?"
"Yes," Jason smiled, "Computer, take us home."